China breaks up gang offering sex-selective abortions

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has broken up a gang that offered
illegal services to determine the sex of unborn children so that
women could abort those they did not want, the country's health
ministry said on Sunday.

Three decades of strict family planning have bolstered a
traditional bias for male offspring, seen as the main support of
elderly parents and heirs to the family name, and have resulted
in abortions, killings or abandonment of girls and trafficking
of both male and female children.

The health ministry said the crackdown netted 10 people who
had since 2010 operated a service sending women from all over
the country to a clinic in the central city of Zhengzhou to find
out the sex of their unborn child.

Last year alone, more than 1,000 women used the service, it
said, although it did not say how many abortions resulted.

One of the ringleaders has already received a jail term of
three and a half years and fined 100,000 yuan, with the rest
getting slightly shorter sentences.

The ministry said it was the biggest case of its kind in the
past few years.

"This went on for a long time, covering a wide area and
involved many people. It was malicious, had serious results and
was a great threat to society," it added.

The problem is widespread, the ministry warned, adding that
it faced a "serious situation" in trying to end such abuses.

The government has tried for years to address the issue,
which has led to serious population imbalances in some parts of
China, particularly its wealthy coastal provinces.

Last week a court handed down a suspended death sentence for
a doctor who sold seven newborns to human traffickers, in a case
that ignited anger over rampant child trafficking.

The imbalance has created criminal demand for abducted or
bought baby boys, but also for baby girls destined to be future
brides, attracting rich dowries in parts of the country where
there are too few women for all the men seeking wives.

While the government late last year announced a relaxation
of its "one child" policy, many curbs remain, with Beijing
saying family planning is still a key way to ensure China does
not produce too many children to burden limited resources.